Case glanced at his companions, shrugged, then ostentatiously picked up his rifle and checked that it was primed. He followed Starbuck into the trees, taking care to keep a half dozen paces behind. Starbuck remembered the shot in the Harper’s Ferry night, but that was not why he had summoned Case because Case would never admit to having been one of the two men. Instead, on the eve of battle, Starbuck wanted to make peace.

Starbuck stopped when they were out of earshot of the rest of the battalion. “So what,” he asked, “would the Royal Fusiliers be doing different?” Case seemed bemused by the question and did not answer. Starbuck looked into the ugly face and was amazed again by the flat brutality of Case’s eyes. “Even in the Royal Fusiliers,” Starbuck said, “sergeants don’t get away with defying their officers. What the hell did you expect me to do? Let you keep your stripes?” Again Case did not answer. He just turned his head and spat a thin stream of tobacco juice onto a hump of limestone.

“Tomorrow,” Starbuck went on, but feeling as though he was wading through a lake of molasses, “we’re going to fight, and if A Company fights as feebly as it did the other day, you’re all going to die.” That got Case’s attention. The feral gaze shifted from some distant point among the trees to stare into Starbuck’s eyes. “You know how to fight, Case, so make damn sure the rest of the company fights like you. Do that, and you get your stripes back. Understand?”

Case paused, then nodded. He shifted the tobacco from one cheek to another, spat again, but still did not speak. Starbuck was about to launch himself into an earnest peroration about men not being able to serve two masters, about the need for discipline, about the value of experienced men like Case to a battalion like the Yellowlegs, but he managed to check the words before he even began. He had said all he needed to say and Case had heard all he needed to hear and the rest was up to Case himself, but at least, Starbuck thought, he had given the tall man something to look forward to beyond mere revenge. “When tomorrow’s over, Case,” he said, “you can go to another regiment if that’s what you want, and you can go as a Sergeant, but tomorrow you fight with us. You understand me?”

Case paused. “You through?” he finally asked.

“I’m through.”

Case turned and walked away. Starbuck watched him go, then walked east until he came to the edge of the wood and could stare across the valley. Distant fires flickered in far woods. Somewhere behind him, on the plateau, a gun fired. There was a pause, then a Yankee cannon answered. A battery of rebel artillery, poised on a hill to the turnpike’s west, had seen the Northern gunners emplacing a battery and so had opened fire. The two sides dueled as the night fell, and fought on into the darkness so that their gunflashes lit the farmland in sudden bursts of unnatural light that spewed their powdery glare across green fields and cast black shadows among the heavy trees. To the east, on the slope that fell down to the creek, the burning farm buildings churned thick smoke and bright sparks into the night air. The cannon fire died slowly and finally ceased altogether, but then, in the echoing silence, it began to rain. Starbuck, rolled at last in his blanket beneath the trees, heard the drops pattering on the green leaves and tried to sleep, but sleep would not come. He had marched to Sharpsburg and he was more frightened than he had ever been in all his life. Because tomorrow he must fight.